Two kinds of home
Roman cities contained two very different kinds of housing. The domus was a private house, generally for a wealthy family and its dependants. The insula, literally “island”, could refer to a city block, but it also came to mean a multi-storey building divided into rented apartments. A small number of people owned a domus; a very large share of city residents, probably most in a place like Rome, lived in rented rooms. Evidence for the two comes from literature, inscriptions and excavated towns such as Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia, and each source gives a partial view.
Inside the domus
Domus layouts varied, but the classic townhouse faced inward. From the street a narrow passage, the fauces, led into the atrium, a central hall that was partly open to the sky. Rain fell into a basin called the impluvium, and the water was often collected in a cistern. Around the atrium were bedrooms (cubicula), storage rooms and, on the far side, the tablinum, a room used by the head of household for business and records.
Beyond that, wealthier houses added a garden court framed by columns, the peristyle, a feature borrowed from the Greek world and a mark of the spread of Hellenistic taste after Roman expansion. A dining room, the triclinium, was named for its three couches, and wall paintings, mosaics and statues showed off taste and status. The best-known examples of such wall decoration come from Pompeii wall paintings, which survive because of the eruption of Vesuvius.
The domus was also a place of business and politics. In the morning, clients called to greet their patron, a ritual known as the salutatio, and the entrance hall might be crowded with visitors. Many houses had shops (tabernae) opening onto the street, sometimes rented out to tradespeople or run by the household’s own dependants. Enslaved workers cooked, cleaned, carried water and served at table, so a large house contained a whole working community. That is a reminder of how much of the elite lifestyle rested on Roman slavery.
The rise of the insula
As Rome and other cities grew, space became scarce and land expensive. Builders responded by going upward. An insula might rise several storeys, with shops or workshops on the ground floor and apartments above. The ground-floor rooms were often the most desirable, while the higher floors were cheaper because the stairs were long and climbing with water was a chore. Ancient writers, such as the satirist Juvenal, describe the upper floors as the place where the poor lived.
Excavated insulae at Ostia, Rome’s port, show well-built brick-faced buildings with balconies, shops and stairways. These survive in much better condition than insulae at Rome itself, and they suggest that not every apartment block was a slum. Even so, living conditions were often cramped.
Comfort, water and waste
Running water usually reached public fountains and wealthier households. The system of Roman aqueducts delivered water into cities, but upper-storey tenants commonly had to fetch water from street fountains. Cooking was typically done on portable braziers or at nearby food shops, since open fires in wooden-floored upper rooms were a danger. Many tenants used chamber pots and public latrines. The use of fired brick and Roman concrete made some buildings sturdy, but building quality varied between cheap and careful work.
Fire, collapse and regulation
Writers describe fire and collapse as constant worries. Wood in floors and roofs, open flames for lighting and heating, and narrow streets gave fires an easy path. Augustus is credited with creating the vigiles, a city watch that also served as a fire brigade. The great fire of 64 CE, under Nero, destroyed large parts of Rome, and later rebuilding rules are reported to have emphasised fire-resistant materials and wider streets.
Height limits were also imposed. Ancient sources report limits of about seventy Roman feet under Augustus and sixty under Trajan, which is roughly twenty metres and a little less, though the exact details of these rules are not certain. Juvenal and others also complain of landlords who cared little about structural safety and who patched cracks and told tenants to sleep soundly. Because these are satirical sources, they probably exaggerate, but they reflect real anxieties.
Rent and the housing market
Tenants usually paid rent to a landlord, or to a middleman who sublet rooms. Some landlords held large portfolios of property, and wealthy families sometimes owned insulae alongside their own domus. Rents in Rome were reportedly much higher than in smaller towns. Poorer tenants might share a single room, and rooms could be rented by the night in inns. Housing for the poorest, such as people without steady work or family support, was precarious.
What the contrast shows
The domus and insula illustrate the sharp economic gap in Roman cities. Yet the two types were not always neatly separated: a rich man might have a domus beside an insula on the same street, shops lay under elegant houses, and the poor passed through the same streets as the wealthy. Looking at both gives a more balanced picture of Roman urban life than the grand villas alone.